1 Chronicles 29:14

Because all matter

comes from you, then of your own

have we given you.

Psalm 88:18, Hello darkness, my old friend ...

You have turned my friends

against me, now darkness is

my one companion.

Habakkuk 2:14, Isaiah 11:9

The earth will fill with

the knowledge of God as the

waters fill the seas.

BBC 2

I am here because Gloria died.  I am a grieving widower.  I am also a depressive, and am in a particularly down cycle right now.  I'm really fun at parties.

I'm here to talk about Gloria, death, grief, pain, and other hilarious things.  Okay, I hear some nervous laughter over in the corner.  We can build on that.

We're not allowed to talk about death, and grief, and pain, and stuff like that in our society.  It's forbidden.  It's taboo.  These just aren't topics that anybody will talk about.  I've got to talk about Delta.  It's much more fun to say that Gloria died, and then the girls threw me out of my house and moved me to Delta, before they moved me here.  It's not quite accurate, but it's a lot more fun to put it that way.

I am a systems analyst.  If I'm going to grieve, I am going to kick ass in the grieving department.  I am going to study the heck out of it.  And I have been.  So, when I was in Delta, I saw this ad for a death cafe.  The ad said that it wasn't for bereavement counseling.  But, I was really curious about what you would do at a death cafe.  They did say that it was simply an opportunity for people to talk about death.  Since people can't talk about death in our society: it's forbidden.  So, I wanted to see what they would be talking about, and how they would be talking about death.  Were these just a bunch of Byron-esque, Goth wannabes?  Well, it turned out, that they were really interesting bunch of people, and the few times that I was able to attend, we had some really interesting discussions.  I'd like to start up a death cafe here in Port Alberni.  It was a lot of fun there, and I think it would be a lot of fun here.  However, I have wondered from my topic.

Because my topic today is depression, and grief, and, specifically, suicide.  I am bereaved and a depressive, and so, obviously, I am somewhat suicidal.  A number of people who have taken me seriously about that have been concerned about whether I have suicidal ideation.  Suicidal ideation is when you actually make plans about committing suicide.  And, generally yes, I have been making plans about suicide.  You don't have to worry too much about it, because, being a depressive, the motivation to commit suicide gets stronger as I get more depressed.  However, because depression sucks your energy, and, as well, impairs your cognitive processes, my ability to commit suicide decreases as my motivation increases.  So far it's been pretty much of a balance.  So, so far, I haven't committed suicide.

But there's good news on that front.  The good news is that I realized that I don't actually have to plan to commit suicide.  As the only pedestrian in Port Alberni, all I have to do is keep doing what I've been doing, and eventually one of you guys is going to kill me.  Because you can't drive.

You guys are terrible drivers.  I mean, it's not your fault.  You have beautiful wide streets.  I really love the beautiful wide streets here in Port Alberni.  But it means you don't have to worry about how well you drive on the streets.  You don't even have to aim to get down the streets.

And, as mentioned, I'm the only pedestrian in Port Alberni.  So you guys don't have to worry about pedestrians.  Okay, I'm not the *only* pedestrian in Port Alberni.  But I'm the only non-jogging, non-dog-walking, non-homeless pedestrian in Port Alberni.  None of you guys walks.  So there's no pedestrians on the streets for you to worry about.  I regularly have drivers yell at me, "Hey, you know, there *are* sidewalks!"  Of course, I'm not on the road when they yell that.  I'm crossing a parking lot!  How are you supposed to get from the store *to* the sidewalk?

And traffic?  There *is* no traffic in Port Alberni.  I mean, rush hour lasts all of five minutes.  And, at rush hour, you can count the number of cars at Gertrude and Johnston.  And that's the only intersection in town you have to worry about.  And, if you know the back streets, you don't even have to worry about that because you can get around Gertrude and Johnston a number of different ways.  So, no, there's no traffic in Port Alberni.

So there's no demands to force you to learn how to drive properly.  And you guys are really terrible drivers.  Every time I cross a main street in Port Alberni, I am taking my life in my hands.  Pretty much every day, I have somebody drive through the crosswalk that I'm using to cross the street.  In full daylight.  At high noon.  This isn't the case where I'm huddled up in dark clothes, and I'm crossing, in mid block, suddenly ducking out into the traffic, on a cold wet rainy winter night.  No, I'm talking about now, in the summertime, when the daytime starts at 5:00 AM and the sun and the light isn't gone from the sky until about 10:00.

Now, as I say, that's the good news.  I don't have to try to commit suicide, because one of you guys is going to kill me, and save me the trouble.  The bad news is, the depression is bad enough, that the cognitive impairment meant that it took me a month and a half to figure that out.

There is a bit of an oddity to this saga.  My wardrobe, these days, mostly consists of freebies from vendors and conferences.  For at least the last two decades, they have all been enamored of black.  I have black t-shirts, black hoodies, black jackets, and even black socks.  Just about all of my wardrobe is black.

When I got here, I started looking for some means to alleviate the dangers of having an all black wardrobe.  It wasn't easy.  I tried to find reflectors.  It wasn't easy.  I tried bike shops, sporting goods stores, work outfitters, and basically everything I can think of, including some auto parts outlets.  I couldn't find anything appropriate.  It took a long time, but finally I did, so now I have some reflectors for my jackets and packs.

But, while all this was going on, I was wondering about it.  If I'm suicidal, it seems counterproductive to be putting reflectors on my clothing, so that I can be seen at night, crossing the road, by drivers of cars.  After all, I'm hoping that one of the drivers here will kill me.  So why am I putting such effort into getting reflectors for my clothing, in order to be seen at night?

I finally realized that Port Alberni drivers are *so* bad, they need an aim point.

Previously:

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/06/bbc-1.html

Others:

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/11/bbc-3-house.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/12/bbc-4-publicity-and-promotion.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/12/bbc-5-port-alberni-time.html

Sunset

2 Samuel 22:47

The Lord Lives!  Blessed be

my rock, and exalted God,

rock of salvation.

Psalm 34:3

Magnify the Lord

with me, and let us exalt

His name together.

Tactile grief

One of the things I learned from being married to Gloria was that, absent support or restrictions, I am, in the state of nature, intensely competitive.  I don't know why.  Possibly it is because I have always felt alone, and with no support, and worry that if I don't constantly struggle, nothing (and no one) is going to help me to survive.

One of the other things that I learned was that I am intensely tactile.  Again, I don't know why.  Growing up in our family, physical contact just wasn't around.  Maybe that's why I need it.

These two facts are related.

One of the things that annoyed, and sometimes scared, Gloria, was that, when upset, my driving tended to get more aggressive.  She eventually learned that all she had to do, if I was starting to get aggressive on the road, was to touch my skin.  I'd calm down, and slow down.

Today I heard a fragment of a song, "Take a Look Around," by William Prince.  I didn't even hear the whole song, just a few lines of it.  Including the lines, "When she would place her hands upon my skin/calm the fear I held within/I'd be lost without her now ..."

So, major grief burst ...

Santa Rob

Yesterday was, of course, a bit weepy, with a number of grief bursts in the morning.

I was on my way to a prayer meeting in the evening when a woman, admitting to being under the influence of cannabinoids (and possibly other psychoactive substances), approached me and asked for a hug, because she felt that I looked like a  "cleaned up Santa on vacation."

(I'm not sure why Santa would need to be cleaned up.  Possibly soot?)

Welcome to Port Alberni.

(I had been considering getting a haircut and a beard trim, but if the beard at this stage causes random females to approach me on the street and request hugs, then maybe I should rethink that ...)

Ecclesiasticus 19:10

Have you heard something?

Let it die with you.  Courage!

It will not burst you!

Sunset

BBC 1

I'm new here, in Port Alberni.

When people from Port Alberni find out that you're new, they ask where you're from.  I don't know why they ask where you're from.  I start to say that I was born in Vancouver, that I lived in North Vancouver with my wife, that after Gloria died the girls moved me to Delta, and before I get even barely started, they just reply, "Oh, 'The Mainland!'"  Well, of course it's "the mainland."  From here, everywhere is "the mainland."  Everyone is from "the mainland" if they weren't born here.  As far as I can tell, "the mainland" starts at Coombes, if not Cathedral Grove.  To the best of my knowledge, even China is "the mainland."

See, I come from Vancouver.  I'm a Vancouverite.  Vancouver is the ultimate mobile society.  Nobody is from Vancouver.  The standing joke is that only nine people were ever born in Vancouver.  Well, I'm one of the nine.  I was born in Vancouver.  Not only was I born in Vancouver, but both of my parents were born in Vancouver.  Three of my *grandparents* were born in Vancouver.  I'm from Vancouver.

And, like I say, *nobody* is from Vancouver.  Everybody expects that everybody, in Vancouver, is from someplace else.  I once went for a job interview, and they asked, making small talk to put you at ease at the beginning of the interview, where are you from?  I said Vancouver.  They replied, no, no, where were you born?

Vancouver.

But that's not the case in Port Alberni.  Everybody in Port Alberni was born here.  Everybody in Port Alberni has lived all their lives here.  And, most of you are really, really old.  So you've lived here for a long time.  Interestingly, when I lived in North Vancouver, everybody in North Vancouver gave directions by landmarks that don't exist anymore.  It's the same here in Port Alberni, for a slightly different reason.  Everybody in Port Alberni has lived here so long, that the landmarks that they navigate by, don't exist anymore.  Sometimes they have changed because of geological processes.  That's how long most people have lived in Port Alberni.  So, for example, I live at the high school.  No, not the one where the students go everyday, the old high school, that isn't there anymore.  That's the way I give people directions to my house in Port Alberni.

Interestingly, a lot of people here make a big deal of the fact that they moved away, but moved back.  They moved away, and they tried to build a life outside of Port Alberni.  But, even though they tried really hard, they just always felt that they had to move back, even after living someplace else for so long.  And so, eventually they found a way to move back.  And I'll ask, how long were you away?  Oh, it must have been all of five years.

Five years?  That's not "moving away."  That's "going for coffee."  That's a long vacation.  You guys make it sound like exile for most of your lives.  Five years?  You hardly have enough time to find out where the shops are!  Don't get me wrong.  It's perfectly acceptable to love your home town, and I'm really glad that you all do.  But lots of people live away from their home town for that long just to go to college, and they don't make a big deal out of it.

I've also learned a few other things about Port Alberni since coming here.  For example, coffee.  Now, I'm not a big coffee fan.  Oddly, since Gloria died, I've been drinking an awful lot more coffee then I ever have before.  But I'm not a big coffee aficionado.  I'm not one of those who has to have a certain type of coffee, made a certain way.  I don't like strong, bitter tasting drinks, so I take my coffee with a lot of cream and sugar.

But that is not Port Alberni style.  That is one thing that I have found since coming here: the way people from Port Alberni like their coffee.  Good coffee, in Port Alberni, is strong, and dark, and black, and bitter.  Port Alberni coffee is for people who think Starbucks doesn't make their extra dark roast strong enough.  Other people might talk about paint stripper.  In Port Alberni, the coffee that's good enough doesn't just strip paint, but takes off the gelcote, too, and starts eating holes in the fiberglass.  Or, sometimes they talk about rust remover.  Port Alberni coffee will take off the rust, and then start etching the steel.  That's the way people in Port Alberni like their coffee.  The preferred coffee shops in town all know this.  The default brew at any independent coffee shop here in Port Alberni, is strong, extra dark, and extra bitter.  And none of the restaurants or coffee shops put out cream and sugar, because, why would you put sugar in your coffee?  It's not bitter enough anyway.

So, when I learned that there was an open mic night, which featured not only musicians and other artists, but comedy, as well, I thought I'd give it a try.  After all, I'm here because my wife died.  So, given that you guys like black bitter coffee, I thought I'd try out some black, bitter comedy, and see if that's to your taste.

Others:

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/06/bbc-2.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/11/bbc-3-house.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/12/bbc-4-publicity-and-promotion.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/12/bbc-5-port-alberni-time.html

Job 3:16

No one spoke a word

for they saw his sufferings

were exceeding great.

Psalm 83:5

Ignorant, senseless,

they keep on undermining

earth's society.

Sunrise

Jeremiah 32:27

See, I am the Lord,

does anything exist that

is too hard for me?

Sunrise

1 Chronicles 17:17

You regard me as

someone of high rank, for years,

Lord and companion!

Arrowsmith

(I have *GOT* to get a proper camera body ...)

Sunrise

Habakkuk 2:4a

The upright man will

surely and certainly live

by his faithfulness.

Another busy morning in bustling downtown Port Alberni

Psalm 71:17

God, you taught me when

I was young, and I am still

proclaiming your deeds.

2 Samuel 22:32

Who is God?--The Lord!

Again, who is it, our rock,

except our Lord God?

Proverbs 25:20

Like stealing a coat

on a cold day is one who

sings to a sad heart.